Journal

The Beginning | 2015 & Reflections of Amsterdam

Hello 2015!

What a year you've started off as. I am still adapting to the move and grove of the Amsterdam vibes, coasting around the chilly city on my bike and destroying my taste buds on boiling-lava-hot bitterballens. These past two months have been the most bizarre and exciting that I've ever experienced; there's this constant buzz inside me keeping me inspired by the beauty and newness of it all. Fear has become one of my good friends, calling me often, asking what I'm doing and encouraging me to push through it. Destiny is being manifested and each day has introduced me to new friends, fresh ideas, reflections of forgotten sentiments and a constant exploration through the galaxy of limitless adventure and creativity.

And what better place to be in than in a city of creative heroes? The other day I had words and cappuccinos with Roman poet and founder of The Soon Institute, Lorenzo de Rita. Rewind to one year ago, me sitting in the old Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, Colorado reading about him and the Join the Pipe project (the first social network of tap water drinkers with the of dream building the longest water pipe in the world, long enough so that everyone, everywhere has access to clean drinking water). I remember thinking, this is someone I want to meet someday. Before coming to Amsterdam, I wrote to him to see if he was willing to meet me, and as it turns out, heroes are people too. There we were a few days after he accepted to meet me, sitting there on Museumplein sharing our stories and hearing about his prototypes of film canisters with a rolls of photographer descriptions to The Mushroom Collection. Maybe it's because we're both Italian and slightly crazy (I guess the two are synonymous), but we connected quickly.

Here's a little list of the colorful characters I've met in Amsterdam so far: